Gray
by jul14
Summary: Introspective piece, Clarice musing on the nature of good and bad, and the shift in mindset that she underwent.


**A/N: Okay, so I really, really hated ****Hannibal****, both in movie (and only slightly less so) in book form. Original authors are generally good at keeping their characters similar, or changing them through actual character development. Harris did none of that in Hannibal, merely changing Clarice from the girl we knew and loved in ****Silence **** to that **_**thing**_** that ran off with Dr. Lecter in ****Hannibal****. Not to say that I don't love that they ended up together, I'm a fanfiction author, after all. However, I thought that there should have been some reason behind Clarice's moral shift. So I wrote one. **

**All credit goes to Tom Harris. If I owned Silence, this would be part of the books.**

**And a huge, tremendous, enormous thanks to my real-life friend and beta Askel. FFM won't let me post the account name. Either way, you're pretty awesome. **

As a child, I saw everything in black and white. Daddy the night watchman was a good guy. Mommy, washing the blood out of his hat, strong and proud was a good guy too. My Daddy, with the broken-tip pocket knife and warm flannel, my Mommy with the strong eyes, trying to keep our family together through the crippling Appalachian poverty: these were good. The men who killed my Daddy, the men who killed my Mommy's will: these were the bad. As a child, even through the poverty and the pain and the hunger, life was simple.

Then, the FBI came into my life. Like a cruel lover, the Bureau inserted itself into my thinking, indoctrinating me. '_Black and white, Starling. Black and white. They're bad, we're good. They lose, we win. It is never the other way around_.

The aim of the FBI is to cultivate it's agents from Quantico onwards, to a point where there is _only_ 'Us' and 'Them'. They almost had me, but even the Bureau makes mistakes from time to time. In my case, that mistake was bumbling, well-meaning, Jack Crawford and his 'interesting little errand'. It was in the dank, poorly-lit basement of the Baltimore Hospital For The Criminally Insane that I met a creature not so dissimilar to myself, a kindred sprit (if there are such things). Hannibal initiated my mental shift with silly little games of quid-pro-quo, and by planting the poisonous seeds of '_what if?'_ in my mind. Bitterness and disillusionment- a powerful wedge to drive through any bond—eventually did the rest, and by the time we met again, the hard walls of morals had all but fallen. Rather than Bad and Good, Black and White, my mind became more gray, understanding (though not forgiving) the men who shot my Daddy. When Hannibal and I met again, he gave me an opportunity, a murmured question in the dead of night: "_Run with me, Starling?"_. With our skin sticky from sweat and his breath on my neck, I finally realized something. Though he may not have been Good, neither was he the incarnate of Evil that the Bureau so often presented him as. I gladly agreed.

Even now, I sometimes wonder how people see me. At this point, even the Bureau must know that I wasn't taken by force, not after they found Krendler's corpse with my fingerprints on it. I know that they see me as amoral, as Bad that must be destroyed. I know that the Lecter taskforce exists, perhaps renamed the Lecter/Starling taskforce, and perhaps new Behavioral Science trainees are scared with stories of me, the Rouge Agent. Like Will Graham before me, I am a warning to all who may listen too closely to the dark snake of Bad.

Ardelia is the only person I hope will understand. Could my closest friend see through the Bad, and see me as Clarice? I would still be the woman sitting against her washing machine nursing a beer, if only I could. Could she understand that killing, even killing sanctioned by the Bureau makes us no better than their vision of Hannibal? Before I left, my official body count was just a few shy of his, and yet _I _ was still considered Good. I have tasted human flesh, I have pleasured in the touch of a killer, I have killed and I have lied. Does that make me despicable, does that make me Bad?

I no longer believe so. They may call us monsters, but when all that remains are the memories of long-past touches and deeds, it should also be remembered that we were human too. We all began life Pure and Good, and perhaps some of us remained so. There are Liliths, and there are Eves in this world, there is the snake and the apple. Some may pass the Evil without a second glance, some may be strong in the face of Temptation. Are those of us who pause to taste of forbidden fruit, and drink in the sweet perfume of pain and pleasure Evil? Are those who can continue undeterred, heads held high, are they Good? Or are we all merely human? All humans are susceptible to love and pain and hate, all of us can give pause at the thought of the snake and the apple. So they may hunt us, but may they never forget what we are. We are not Good or Bad, we are merely human.

**A/N: I figure if you've gotten this far, you've probably read the story. Reviews are the Chianti to my fava beans and liver. **


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